Mugabe blames poverty on Britain, U.S

Mugabe blames poverty on Britain, U.S

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By Staff Reporter

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe said on Thursday that poverty and hunger were on the rise in Zimbabwe as it grapples with its worst economic crisis since independence, but pinned the blame on drought and foreign sabotage.

Critics say the crisis -- seen in chronic fuel and food shortages as a well as record inflation and unemployment -- is largely the result of government mismanagement, a charge Harare denies.

Mugabe, launching a report on Zimbabwe's efforts to meet development goals set by a United Nations summit in 2000, said the southern African country was struggling on overall markers of economic well-being.

"The eradication of extreme poverty and hunger remains a major challenge for Zimbabwe [and] total consumption poverty increased from 42 percent in 1995 to 63 percent in 2003," Mugabe said in a speech at the launch ceremony in Harare.

The Millennium Development Goals seek to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic and malaria, promote gender equality and reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015, among other targets.

Critics say disruptions linked to Mugabe's seizure of white-owned commercial farms for blacks have undermined the key agriculture sector, leaving southern Africa's former breadbasket grappling with persistent food shortages since 2000.
The Zimbabwe report said a poverty assessment study had shown that 69 percent of the country's population lived below the food poverty line, up from 57 percent in 1999.

International aid groups have estimated that as many as five million of Zimbabwe's 12 million people may need food help this year.

Mugabe, 81 and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, insists the shortages are mainly a result of drought, rather than the land reforms, which he argues were necessary to correct ownership imbalances created by colonialism.
"The country is ... facing economic difficulties mainly because of the recurrent debilitating droughts experienced since the early 90's and the hostile responses of the British and American governments to our land redistribution program," the veteran leader said on Thursday.

He acknowledged Zimbabwe had an increasing housing backlog, but defended his government's demolition earlier this year of urban slums -- which the United Nations says left at least 700,000 people homeless -- saying Harare had embarked on a program to construct new houses.

Mugabe said Zimbabwe had gone a long way in promoting the millennium goal of universal primary education, with primary school enrollment in Zimbabwe increasing to 97 percent in 2004 from 85 percent in 1999 - Reuters
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